Civilising the Eleusinian Sacred Way

Abstract

The Sacred Way to Eleusis is one of the most interesting places in Greece for exploring the social and religious construction of the landscape in Ancient Greece. Eleusis was considered to be the borderland of Attica and its incorporation into the chóra of Athens was a long and hazardous process that apparently took place between the eighth and sixth centuries BC. In this paper, the spotlight is placed on the process of constructing this sacred way through myths and rituals. These are linked to some crucial places along the way, built as landmarks or nodes where rites, stories and cults intertwined to shape the religious experience of people and their memory of the past. Special emphasis is placed on the relationship between the liminal/reversal aspects of this space –constructed as an “eschatiá”– and the civilising and ordering elements integrating this potentially dangerous way in the correct and sacred order of the polis, thus sacralising it. Both aspects –reversal and civilisation– are examined in three areas: the ritual domestication of the agrarian space; rites linked to human sexuality and procreation; and the political appropriation of the territory through ritual.